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10 Year Tax Abatement, but Only After 18 Months
One of the biggest incentives for people to move downtown are the tax abatements that the City of Des Moines is offering to lure people down here. I know it was a huge factor in my decision! I would be saving about $465 a month and that’s almost the size of car payment. The building I picked to live in, the Liberty Building, touted 10 year tax abatement on their brochures as well as a number of other condo projects that I looked at. No property taxes for 10 years, what an awesome deal, for me over the course of 10 years that’s a savings of almost $56,000. I was so tickled that I didn’t dig into what a 10 year tax abatement truly mean for me. So I hope this post may help future downtown buyers avoid the shock that I received the day I went to file for my tax abatement.
I went downtown to the City of Des Moines Permit & Development Center to file for the tax abatement, and started talking with the clerk. (Here’s where the surprise came.) I closed on my condo on March 3rd, 2008 but the deadline for tax year is February 1st, so even though I was filing now nothing would even be processed until sometime next February 2009 and I would see no tax abatement until September 1st 2009, a whole 18 months of taxes later. So to get the 10 years worth of abatement for myself, I would have to live there for 11 years and 8 months. I will have to pay almost $10,000 until then.
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Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Liberty Condos | Taxes
